Question

File > Place Search Not Working

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
December 29, 2025
3 replies
408 views

I'm having an issue with placing objects. When I press 'Cnrl+D' to place an object and use the search bar in the file explorer nothing happens and I can't file any files I'm looking for unless trawling through manually.

- I'm on windows

- It's not an issue of typos

- Searching for a file outside of InDesign works perfectly fine and locates files as it should

Bug

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Jake,

I just checked that behavior on my Windows 11 laptop, and the feature is Searching normally.

What version of Windows 11 are you using (see Windows > Update) ? Did you patch InDesign up to 21.1?

Mike Witherell

J

Jake24766604ofuhAuthor

Hi Abhishek,

I'm using Windows 11 and version 21.0.2 of InDesign.

This problem only occurs on InDesign (new and existing documents) and works
normally on Photoshop for example. I noticed that the problem began a
few months ago. I have since updated to a newer version to see if that
would fix the issue, and have also reset my preferences.
[image: Screenshot 2025-12-29 120620.png]

--
Kind regards,

*Jake Smith*
Senior Marketing Executive

<Personal info removed by MOD>

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Jake24766604ofuh,

Thanks for sharing the details, and sorry you're running into this issue. To help narrow this down, could you please confirm the exact Windows version and the InDesign version you're using? It would also help to know whether this happens in a completely new document as well, or only with existing files, and whether this behavior started recently or has always been present.

Please also check and confirm if the same issue occurs in other Creative Cloud apps, such as Illustrator or Photoshop, or if it's limited to InDesign only. If you haven't already tried it, I recommend resetting the InDesign preferences and then testing again after updating. Ref: https://adobe.ly/4q5KFhq

If possible, a short screen recording showing the search not responding inside the Place window would be really helpful for me to review this further.

Looking forward to hearing back with your observations.

Abhishek

J

Jake24766604ofuhAuthor

Hi Abhishek,

I'm using Windows 11 and version 21.0.2 of InDesign.

This problem only occurs on InDesign (new and existing documents) and works
normally on Photoshop for example. I noticed that the problem began a
few months ago. I have since updated to a newer version to see if that
would fix the issue, and have also reset my preferences.

The screenshot dispays an example of an item I would like to search for, but isn't narrowing down search results or doing anything in fact.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Jake24766604ofuh,

Thanks for the update. Could you please try a few isolation steps that have helped in similar cases? First, close all Adobe apps, then go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe and rename the CEP folder to CEP.old. After that, relaunch InDesign and test the Place search again.

If the issue continues, please close InDesign and rename the UXP folder to UXP.old from both C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe and C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe. Once done, restart InDesign and check whether the search in the Place dialog starts working as expected.

If the behavior is still the same, the next step would be to test this in Windows Safe Mode to isolate whether any background plugin, extension, or service is interfering. You can follow the steps here to start Windows in Safe Mode and then launch InDesign for testing: https://adobe.ly/4qoCegI

Additionally, please try testing the same workflow from a new local administrator user account. This will help confirm whether the issue is tied to your current Windows user profile. Ref: https://adobe.ly/4jf5fsN

I look forward to your observations.

Abhishek

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